David Michôd and Joel Edgerton’s The King reinvents Henry V for Netflix, says Dan Slevin.
Timothée Chalamet is Henry V in David Michôd’s The King. Photo: Netflix
Rewriting Shakespeare is always good for a hubristic laugh or two and there are a few to be had in David Michôd’s Netflix interpretation/adaption/what you will of Henry V, The King, which dropped a week or so ago.
Some of those laughs are even intentional: Joel Edgerton as Falstaff isn’t as portly as Orson Welles but certainly looks like he enjoys a drink or two but could also do you some real damage if you crossed him. And Robert Pattinson’s Inspector Clouseau accent as the Dauphin of France must surely have been exactly what he set out to do with the complete agreement of the director.
But the rest of the picture takes on a much more sombre tone – supposedly a rethinking of the whole Prince Hal to the Battle of Agincourt journey. A young man forced to give up his freedom and follow his destiny and, on the road, discover the many different ways he has to put aside his naiveté and embrace what we now call realpolitik.
Photo: Netflix
Hal is played by flavour-of-the-month Timothée Chalomet (Call Me By Your Name) and, despite not looking strong enough to blow the skin off a rice pudding, he proves early on to be more than a match for Tom Glynn-Carney’s Hotspur in single combat, insulting his little brother Thomas (Dean-Charles Chapman) in the process.
Their father, Henry IV (the decidedly un-double-barreled Ben Mendolsohn), dies and Hal has to become Henry V. At first, he behaves like an enlightened and sensible human-centred monarch, not rising to French bait about his age, but eventually palace intrigue in favour of an invasion of that country – to not appear weak – turns his head which in turn leads to that fateful encounter featuring archers and mud.
Robert Pattinson is the Dauphin in The King. Photo: Netflix
Michôd and Edgerton wrote the screenplay and – if I’m not mistaken – this is their first collaboration since the outstanding Aussie crime drama Animal Kingdom nearly ten years ago. Mendo was in that too, so it’s something of a reunion.
Most of the young men in the film sport Mark Zuckerberg haircuts which might well be accurate but is still off-putting. The women are few and far between but notable – Thomasin McKenzie as Hal’s sister Philippa, the young Queen of Denmark and Johnny Depp’s daughter Lily – looking a spitting image of her mother Vanessa Paradis – makes a late but important appearance as Hal’s arranged bride-to-be.
I wasn’t convinced by the script – you really do need to know what you are doing when you are taking on the Bard – but the direction, production values and many of the performances were very strong. Unfortunately for Chalamet, the jury at our house is still out.
The King is streaming on Netflix and is rated R13 (Strong violence & offensive language) by the NZ censor and 16+ (based on Netflix’s own rating system).
